I wouldn't use this at all. All you're doing is sending more information to the server, causing it to use more bandwith and CPU use to keep talking to you.

you misread it, you are not sending any more data than before. Instead of waiting for 2 packets to come in then sending two acks for it, it sends an ack for each one. Same number of acks sent, just sent more frequency.

dropped my ping from 300 to under 80 and Soul dropped to under 30. Does not affect bandwidth at all.

I now have a cleric, gladiator, ranger and sorc. No one above 10 though Gladiator is close. Sanctuary really is a stunning place graphically. Though the Fedex missions there are a bit of a drag.....it does get you to see the city though.

Man that boat to the outer dock is so slow I could read War and Peace....well the Cliff notes version at least.

The Legion hit Level 2 last night. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the leveling fund. We'll be able to change our cloak emblem once we scrape up 12k, and our legion bank has grown by a few slots.

Level 3 will be a bit of a beast - we need 1,000,000 and 20,000 Abyss points. Level 3 will give us the opportunity to upload our own custom cloak emblem and further expand our bank.

The Legion hit Level 2 last night. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the leveling fund. We'll be able to change our cloak emblem once we scrape up 12k, and our legion bank has grown by a few slots.

Level 3 will be a bit of a beast - we need 1,000,000 and 20,000 Abyss points. Level 3 will give us the opportunity to upload our own custom cloak emblem and further expand our bank.

Quck question - anyone getting SLI to work in Aion? I found I could force it if I globally changed the rendering to force alternate framer rendering 2 in the nVidia control panel. Doesn't help FPS much at this point, but it DEFINITELY lowered the temps on the graphics cards. So, in my book that's a plus. I hope they figure out a way to maximize SLI in the game at some point, although it runs pretty well as is. I generally fluctuate from between 30 to 50 in town and crowded areas to 60-100 or more outside of towns.

Soul, unfortunately due to Aion's STUPID STUPID STUPID legion design, you have to be promoted to officer. For some insane reason, Aion won't let you give bank permissions to regular members, and it won't let you make custom rankings. I've just said to hell with it and given everybody officer status - we're all adults here, I'm going on the honor system that nobody is going to start randomly inviting strangers to the guild or cleaning the bank out.

And WTF Aion - a TWO HOUR queue when I tried to log in at 8pm EST tonight. I thought things were getting better. Apparently it's the exact opposite.

So since I have an extra hour of time on my hands, I thought it might be a good time to put down some early impressions of Aion.

Here's the short version: this game has an intangible, addictive old-school feel and quality to it, leaving me inexplicably wanting to play it more. For the first time in a long while, I actually can't wait to get home to play an MMO. It's gorgeous to look at and has a lot of nice small touches that make for an overall fun and even at times relaxing gaming experience.

Now for some hard critique. If you are looking for a rosy review, stop here because it's going to get ugly fast.

Technical - I am not playing the game at the moment because for the umpteenth time I am sitting and waiting in a player queue. I don't recall this kind of fun since the early days of WoW's release, and that was very short lived. I've also never experienced such long queues. Very typically they are over an hour. Today it's TWO plus hours. On top of this there have been sporadic server crashes. So if I had to estimate the percentage time I've been playing compared to the time I intended to be playing, it's probably around 75%, and this only because I was able to sneak in a lot of time over the weekend and after prime time (we are on an east coast server). Fanboys will say this is part of the design and is important for the longterm survival of the game, or that I am being "naive" for having any other expectations. As a paying customer, I call BS on that - I need to be able to login during the spare hours that I am able to, or the $50 I spent (and the $15/month they want from me) is worthless. Every moment I can't is like a denial of service. I wouldn't tolerate this from my phone, ISP, or TV service, or during a movie or for pretty much any other paid service, so why should I be forced to endure it for this? Just because it's an MMORPG and I should have known better? I don't think so. Other paid services measure their reliability in the 90+ percentiles; I think MMO companies need to start being held to similar standards if they want their customers to pay a monthly fee.

On the bright side, the game looks and sounds great, and I have run into very few bugs or hardware related crashes. Also very little lag or issues of that nature (which I'm told is directly related to the queue system). When I am in the game, aside from a server crash or 2, it has felt remarkably stable, so I will give kudos to that.

Gameplay - at the outset, this is essentially yet another combo of many/most the MMOs we've played, blending elements from DAOC, WoW, WAR, FFXI, Lineage, other Asian MMOS, etc etc. There are 4 starter classes which you can branch into 2, leaving you 8 class choices, and 2 races to start on. The first 10 levels are in a fairly independent area, basically a primer for MMO players to get used to the interface. A campaign ties the gameplay neatly together with a storyline intent on having you remember your past to recover your true future. Side quests galore are doled out as per usual, with the generic find X, get X, fedex system fully in play. Still, some of the quests have a bit more personality than others, and the main campaign is different enough to keep you engaged. There's nothing new here, but it's well done. After the starter levels, you graduate to your "main" class and enter the next phase of gameplay. You also get your "wings" - but soon enough you'll find they are limited in use, as apparently certain areas do not allow you to fly.

The next phase (where I'm currently at) is from 10-20, and continues the PvE experience with more quests and levelling. Make no mistake, there is a "grind" factor to it, no matter how much fans of the game might want to argue differently or shield the game from the dreaded "g" word. Honestly, whether you want to take "grind" as a negative or not is up to you. The fact is if you play this game, you WILL spend time killing X of particular mobs, gathering X of certain resources, and then repeating to get enough xp or skill level to move on to the next area to find more quests. Or you won't progress, simple as that. Quest rewards and xp can be very generous, but it is also possible to level just "grinding" on mobs. Certain quests will require you to gather X of certain material, which means you have to have enough skill to do so, i.e. you may be forced to return to older areas to "grind" your gathering skill. To make matters worse, you have little to nothing to look forward to each level. After 10 you don't get any new skills or spells til every THIRD level. I used to hate it being every 2 in most games, so 3 just seems retarded. Worse, you get no stat boosts or points to play with whatsoever in the interim levels, the best you get is maybe access to a new piece of gear. The only way I've seen to differentiate myself thus far is through choice of gear and "manastones" - boosts which you can slot into most gear. There are varied boosts such as more HP, more mana, higher magical attack, +parry, +evasion, etc, so you can kind of tailor your gear a certain way. It's a nice system, but it's no substitute for a more robust class differentiation system.

There is little group-required content until the late teens, but obviously it's always more fun and easier to work together to complete quests or take on higher level mobs. I haven't done enough grouping to understand the group xp system (as in whether there are boosts to make it worth your while). So thus far I haven't seen any teamwork aspects. Hopefully these will be more prevalent in the later levels.

Now I do have to say that although normally all these things would drive me insane and make me want to shred my game DVDs, there's something oddly addictive in the gameplay that makes it all feel OK and forgivable. Even as I grind one mob after another, I get an odd sense of relief and relaxation that I can't quite explain. So in this case, I'm not construing the basic pve level grind as a negative.

I have yet to experience the PvP (or the advertised PvPvE) so we'll save that for another day.

Summary - this game has almost all of the "features" that I typcially criticize in new games (death penalties, time sinks, level grinds, lack of character differentiation, I could go on and on), but somehow it all feels forgivable for lack of a better word, with the exception of the inexcusable queue times rendering me unable to play - leaving me bitter and helpless to do nothing but post on forums

there is character customization, you just haven't got there yet. check out stigmas while you wait in a queue. guess I'm just defending the game again by pointing out facts though. ;P

You know, at least some of the advanced information they could have explained in the MANUAL, or at least mentioned it. I love the box but the manual was sooooooo skimpy. Some of us old folks still like to read hard copy material you know.

And besides, these were just impressions from 1-20, so it wouldn't make sense to talk about things I hadn't experienced yet.

I think that's an excellent review of pre-20 Aion. There is nothing explosively new, really, but the feel of the game is excellent and reflects the fact that the designers and developers had time to put "love" into it. The game is "grindy" but the grind is pleasant -- sort of like LOTRO in that way, but the combat is WAY more fun and visceral. Character customization pre-20 is relegated to equipment slotting. Stigmas will start adding skill choices at 20 which get more complex as you level.

The queues are extensive though not constant. Their presence is a SEVERE negative, but overall this is one of the most polished and addictive MMOs to come out in many years.

At level 25, it's going to change all over again as we start moving into the abyss and the focus shifts towards abyss point accumulation.

I think our server is probably #1 for queues...when it is way too long I pop onto the server I have Asmodian characters on and even though it says high I only been in a queue once even though I am obviously logging in at peak hours...it is a West Coast server but it always says "high" for loading

there is character customization, you just haven't got there yet. check out stigmas while you wait in a queue. guess I'm just defending the game again by pointing out facts though. ;P

Well it remains to be seen how versatile the Stigma system is. One of the biggest complaint in beta was lack of class customization. They responded to it by increasing the slots from 3. I haven't done in-depth research on it, but it still seems like customization is limited compared to what we are used to in other MMOs.

Well, the queues have gotten me too, even though I tend to be on late. Well, and the crash on Lumiel two nights ago. Last night I was going to hop online at midnight and lo and behold but I find a 30 minute queue. So I park myself in the queue and head off to do other things. When I come back some 20 minutes later I found the game has frozen up so I have to relog in and do it all over again. At that point it was getting too late to bother, so I just played WoW and did some battlegrounds for an hour. Hope it improves!

there is character customization, you just haven't got there yet. check out stigmas while you wait in a queue. guess I'm just defending the game again by pointing out facts though. ;P

Well it remains to be seen how versatile the Stigma system is. One of the biggest complaint in beta was lack of class customization. They responded to it by increasing the slots from 3. I haven't done in-depth research on it, but it still seems like customization is limited compared to what we are used to in other MMOs.

My other comment to this is why in the design put the customization so far down the line? For an average player, I believe the level time to hit 20 will be in the 20-30 hour range (it's hard for me to gauge how much time I've actually been in game). So why withhold a fun/critical element of an RPG for so long? It's like not getting sex til the 6th date OK so you say it's built for the long term - but then I'd ask are the developers deliberately trying to dissuade casual players from playing?